


The Third Case

by norgbelulah



Category: Fringe
Genre: F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Hypothermia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-10
Updated: 2011-10-10
Packaged: 2017-10-26 01:46:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/277243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/norgbelulah/pseuds/norgbelulah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is only their third case.  Olivia didn't imagine it going down quite this way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Third Case

**Author's Note:**

  * For [oxoniensis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oxoniensis/gifts).



> Written for oxoniensis for the Fall Fandom Free-for-all. The prompt was "Huddling for warmth/survival leads to *feelings*!"
> 
> Also fills the "hypothermia" prompt on my hc_bingocard.

This is only their third case. She has to keep reminding herself of that.

Lincoln’s just... really good. They just work... really well together. And she shouldn’t be surprised, not really.

Not after what she’s seen in the other universe, what she experienced there. But he continues to surprise her with his keen observation, with his willingness to roll with the punches, and especially with his ability to keep calm under extraordinary circumstances.

And things are just going remarkably well, that is until the door to the suspect’s mysterious cold room is slammed behind them.

Someone must have kicked out the brick Lincoln placed there to keep it from closing. She sneers at herself disgustedly, one of them should have waited outside, made sure no one came in behind them. It’s a rookie mistake and she says so.

“Don’t beat yourself up about it,” he replies, lips already turning a little blue around the edges as he looks at his phone. “Could have happened to anyone. Also, I was here too, so you can’t take all the blame. Do you have any bars? I got none at all.”

“No,” she says, grudgingly accepting his calm demeanor. “None.” She puts away her phone and starts walking around the small space, looking for alternate doors, an air vent, anything.

“Broyles knows where we are. Astrid will know something’s wrong when we don’t check in. You usually do every, what, half hour?” She’s not looking at him, but his steady words and his sound reasoning do more to calm her than she’d like to admit.

“Yeah, about that. But,” now she turns back to him. She faces the shuttered worry she can see in his eyes and asks, “Can we wait that long?”

Neither of them are wearing particularly warm clothes. She left her FBI jacket in the car. He has his on, but it’s still just a windbreaker. Her fingertips are blue now too, just around the edges of her nails. So are his.

When he doesn’t answer, she keeps walking, searching up and down the walls, examining the door again, but the room is so small she’s just going in circles. She doesn’t know how long she’s at it, but she’s clutching at her fingers they’re so cold and her muscles seem slower, harder to work, by the time she gives up.

There’s no way out. What a way to go, after everything else, she thinks, then forces the thought away.

“Liv,” he says and she feels like she’s been thrust into another world, into the past. She turns and stares at him, but it’s just Lincoln, her Lincoln with his dark suit just like hers and his thick, familiar glasses, sitting on the floor against the door, arms curled around his knees. He’s not the other one. He’s never called her that before. “Liv, come here,” he says.

She realizes her hands are shaking, maybe not from the cold. “Don’t call me that,” she says and takes a step back without meaning to. His expression now is beyond concern and she understands. Her reaction is disproportionate, he probably thinks the temperature is getting to her and maybe it is. “Please, don’t call me that,” she repeats.

He opens his mouth to say something, but closes it then tries again. “Olivia,” he says, his tone precise, “Come over here. The door faces the outside, right? It’s the warmest place. Maybe only by a few degrees, but that might just be what saves us. You need to come here and sit with me before you can’t anymore. Sooner rather than later, I won’t have the strength to drag you.”

There is ice forming on the frames of his glasses, but he doesn’t take them off. She goes to him, folding her stiff, freezing limbs around herself next to him. He gives her a sidelong glance and raises his arm slowly, coming around her shoulders and pulling her close to him.

She knows this is smart, this is what they have to do, but she’s glad he made the move himself. He’d pulled his windbreaker off before and had it draped around him like a blanket, now he extends it across her legs too, though it doesn’t stretch far because he’s so skinny.

She smiles now, finding all of it inexplicably hilarious, while he pulls at the elastic tie binding her hair back. “What are you doing?”

He doesn’t answer, but there’s intense concentration in his expression as he fiddles with her hair. Olivia isn’t sure her own fingers could have done what his were doing, they were so cold and stiff. He arranges the blanket-like strands of her hair around her shoulders and she actually feels a little warmer, though she knows it won’t last.

“There,” he says. “Now maybe we’ll stand a chance.” She leans her head against his shoulder, finally committing to being as close as possible. “Do you want to talk about it?” He nudges her slightly and she hears the small exhale of breath that means he’s smiling, even though she can’t see it. “Because I think, maybe, you’re a little freaked out.”

She can’t help but smile in return, sometimes even laugh, when he teases her. He doesn’t do it that often, but it’s surprisingly welcome when he does. It’s like she can see, has seen, who they can be if their lives had been different, if they had met before now, if everything didn’t seem like it was going to shit one day and hell in a hand-basket the next. It’s nice.

She presses herself closer to him. They’re not getting any warmer.

His arms tighten as he continues, “Because, it seemed to me, like you didn’t freak out until I called you Liv. Will you tell me why? Is that something we can talk about?”

It’s surprisingly easy for her to start talking. “It’s not like nobody has ever called me that before. Ella... Ella calls me that all the time, she got it from Rachel. But it’s different over the phone, coming from a little girl. And Charlie, he used to call me that, and John, before they died.” Olivia realizes, he’s probably hopelessly lost by now, but she can’t start over, she’d never get it out that way. So, she just keeps going. “But after everything that happened, when they kidnapped me, when I thought I was her...”

She trails off and his hand comes up to smooth her hair and his hands are so cold. “I read the files,” he says. “I’m sorry. You don’t have to--”

But still she keeps on, because she’s trying to figure it out herself. “I’ve felt, ever since I got back that that name, it’s more her now than it is me. I’m too... closed off. I can be Aunt Liv for Ella or just Liv for Rachel. But that’s not how I think of myself anymore, I’ve had to separate it.”

“It’s okay, Olivia,” he says her name in that precise way again, and she’s grateful, but something in her thinks that’s not how it should be. “It’s really all right.”

“No, it isn’t,” she says shaking her head, nestling further into his chest. She’s glad he can’t see her face. “It’s not all right because it should be. It should be right. But when I heard you... He calls her that, the other Olivia, and you sounded like him, just like him, when you said it. I can’t-- I can’t be like her. I’m not her.” He breath isn’t as warm as it was before and she realizes she’s rambling.

“Who did I sound like?” he asks and she wants to hit him. He said he read the files.

She tries to curl her fingers into his lapels, but they’re both so stiff, she thinks she’s just pressing her hands into his chest. He bends a little and turns his head to look at her. His lips are a deep frightening violet and there’s ice crystals forming at the edges. His eyes are the warmest thing about the two of them, she thinks, though more crystals have gathered on his lashes and brows. “Her Lincoln,” Olivia says, “The other one. The one who loves her.”

His eyes widen and suddenly there is a bang from the other side of the door, a jarring vibration. They hear Broyles’ booming shout from the other side, calling their names, questioning their status, their health. He says they’re working to get them out, that it should only be a few minutes.

They scoot uncomfortably away from the door, which has begun reverberating with the force of whatever Broyles’ team is using to pry it open. But they don’t move away from each other.

Olivia sags in relief against him and he presses his freezing lips against her temple as he holds her.

“He’s not the only one,” Lincoln says and she buries her face in his chest.

This is only their third case.


End file.
